The business section of the Seattle Post-Inteligencer carries this corporate intervention story with a twist — the twist being that the corporation in question is a nonprofit museum. Since it opened, the Experience Music Project in Seattle has been in search of a focused mission, and scrambling for a more stable mix of revenue against seemingly lavish expenses. A pet project of Microsoft founder Paul Allen, the museum was running on 70 percent contributed income in 2002 (trimmed back to 50 percent last year).
Stepping in to make the museum more lean and mean is corporate ‘turnaround expert’ Paul Abramowitz, fresh from wrestling a plant wholesaler and e-commerce company from its bankruptcy.
The hard news of the story is that Abramowitz cut 37 percent of the museum’s staff (129 people), after 46 people were cut last year and 124 were laid off in 2002. Somehow, even after losing 299 staff members in the past two years, however, the museum will still have a crew of 214. The better news is that those being let go are getting severance, and seem to be satisfied with their treatment.
There’s an odd feeling to the story, which shows that a lot of folks are confused about how nonprofit cultural organizations work. Says EMP spokeswoman Paige Prill:
‘We have been continuing to look at all aspects of our business to get our operating budget in line with our projected revenues to become a self sustaining, non-profit organization….This is part of this process and we have been on this path for the past three years.’
That phrase, ‘a self sustaining, non-profit organization,’ has been popping up in a lot of conversations I’ve heard lately, which raises a question: what exactly is a self-sustaining non-profit? Often, buried within the phrase is the unspoken assumption that earned revenue can somehow, someday meet expenses. That ticket income can match the cost of operations.
And yet, the entire purpose of cultural nonprofit organizations is to sustain, preserve, present, and explore forms of cultural expression that cannot be supported solely by the commercial marketplace. Instead, they rely on multiple markets, including individual donors, corporate funders, foundations, and government agencies. Organizations that can gather enough income from any or all of these sources (earned included) to cover annual operating expenses are, by my definition anyway, self-sustaining.
The problems of the Experience Music Project run deeper than expenses and revenues. These are symptoms of an organization that was a glorious dream of a single donor, and missed a few steps in connecting to a broader base of constituents, and determining its fundamental purpose. Given that EMP sits in a fabulously funky facility, and has an edgy content category (rock and roll), let’s hope they spend some time on those things with the staff they have left.
